So, Gingerbread has finally dropped below 50% of devices accessing Google Play. Ice Cream Sandwich has almost hit the 30%, and after six months, Jelly Bean (4.1 and 4.2) almost hit the 10%. Google's page listing these numbers is like a trainwreck in slowmotion.

Yep, this is a very sobering thought. Carriers don't care about their customers' security. They care about making money, and if the customer is locked into a long contract, they care even less about the state of the OS on the customers' devices.

I don't understand why Android doesn't simply separate the base system (kernel, drivers, Dalvick, whatever) from the userland. That would make it much easier to patch the core components if needed, and it would make it much easier to update or install a different userland system.